After months of humble retreat, Governor Spitzer is reassuming the role of righteous prosecutor as he seeks to salvage two key policy initiatives that have drawn national attention and outcry from Republicans in Albany and Washington.

In a speech yesterday, Mr. Spitzer swung back hard at his critics, accusing opponents of his plan to grant driver’s licenses to New York’s illegal immigrants and his effort to enlarge a government-subsidized health insurance program for children of practicing a “politics of fear.”

“No amount of hysterical rhetoric will prevent us from doing what is right,” Mr. Spitzer said at Fordham University, according to a prepared text of his speech. “I’m not going to run from the fight just because the other side decides to demagogue it.”

For Mr. Spitzer, whose administration’s energy and attention has been diverted by allegations that his office misused state police for partisan gain, the speech served multiple purposes.

With rhetorical efficiency, it sought to bring more public support behind two major but unrelated policy priorities by lumping together his critics under a single indictment.

Whether it’s President Bush resisting New York’s effort to enroll middle-income children in a federal health care program or Republicans in Albany protesting the governor’s immigrant license policy, they are all having “knee-jerk reactions to sound policies that have no business being politicized,” Mr. Spitzer asserted.

Mr. Spitzer, who had toned down his criticisms of the Senate Republican leader, Joseph Bruno, notably resumed a confrontational stance toward his political foe, suggesting that Mr. Bruno and other lawmakers who have attacked his license policy are engaging in demagoguery and “fear mongering.”

The speech also offered the governor a respite from the Republican-fueled scrutiny of the state police controversy, returning Mr. Spitzer to the arena of policy debate, a more comfortable setting for a Harvard-trained lawyer who has spent his career rushing into the battlefield of argument.

“People are debating the merits of an important policy argument made by the governor, and when was the last time anybody did that?” a Democratic political strategist, who is an ally of the governor, said. The strategist asked not to be identified.

Ultimately, what matters most for the governor is winning the debate.

Mr. Spitzer, who as a candidate promised to “change everything” in Albany, faces political pressure to show results after nine months in office.

Senate Republicans in Albany, who are trying to preserve their two-seat majority, are portraying the governor as a rookie politician incapable of delivering on his agenda or working effectively with the Legislature.

While Assembly Democrats say they stand behind the governor, Senate Republicans are drafting legislation to overturn the illegal immigrant driver’s license policy, which Mr. Spitzer intends to put into place next year. Assembly Republicans said they are considering asking a state court for an injunction to block enforcement of the policy.

“He is clearly putting the safety of New Yorkers in jeopardy,” a spokesman for Senate Republicans, John McArdle, said yesterday.

Opponents of the immigrant license policy include two former New York City mayors, Ed Koch, who called it “dead wrong,” and Rudy Giuliani, as well as a number of county clerks, two of whom said they would disobey the governor and refuse to grant licenses to applicants who cannot show they are legal residents.

Under Mr. Spitzer’s policy, undocumented immigrants could apply for driver’s licenses without having to prove their legal status. They would have to submit foreign passports and birth certificates, which would be scanned into a national system to determine if they were fraudulent.

In his speech yesterday, Mr. Spitzer argued that granting licenses to illegal immigrants would make the roads safer and would “bring an entire population of people into a database that, when necessary, can be used to help law enforcement agencies track down criminals.”
His critics, the governor said, have “warped” the debate by equating “immigrants to terrorists” and raising fears that allowing illegal immigrants to drive would make the state more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Mr. Spitzer pointed out that the September 11 commission concluded that an immigration status requirement would not have prevented the attacks. (The commission, however, said such a policy is a “valid question for debate.”)

In defending his health care policy, which seeks to allow children in families with incomes of four times the federal poverty level to enroll in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, Mr. Spitzer said the president’s opposition to an expansion reflects a “selfish politics of ‘not my problem’ that has led to the health crisis we have today.”

The Bush administration, which is poised to veto a congressional reauthorization of Schip, rejected New York’s proposed expansion of the program on the grounds that it would “crowd out” private insurance. New York and seven other states are threatening to sue the Bush administration over its Schip income eligibility policies.

Mr. Spitzer accused the president, whose White House spokeswoman described the Schip bill passed by Congress last week as “socialized-type medicine,” of playing upon the public’s fear of socialism. He said the subsidized insurance program offers families a “wide range of private plans to choose from.”

Mr. Spitzer, who said in speech that the facts he presented “are undeniably clear,” made a couple of questionable claims.

He said, “Unlicensed drivers contribute to five times as many deadly accidents as licensed drivers.” The governor, who was using 10- to 14-year-old AAA data, meant to say that unlicensed drivers are five times more likely than licensed drivers to be involved in fatal accidents, a spokeswoman said.

“It is unlicensed drivers — not immigrants — that are a threat to public safety,” Mr. Spitzer said. The governor, however, did not specify the percentage of unlicensed drivers who are also immigrants.

Mr. Spitzer also said the Bush administration is denying health coverage to 400,000 children in New York. Under the regulations issued by the Bush administration, however, New York would be prohibited from raising the Schip family income cap for the time being, which means that 60,000 to 70,000 children who would have been eligible for public coverage are still ineligible.

The 400,000 figure is actually the state’s estimate of the number of uninsured children in New York.